Changing your life enough for long-term weight loss is never fun, but the best guides try to make the experience as pleasant and manageable as possible.

Dian Thomas’ “Tipping the Scales In Your Favor” manages to succeed surprisingly well on both counts, packed with so much open-minded information and empathy that the only people who might be annoyed are those looking for a slightly more precise organizational system. Probably the best way to approach the book is to read it through once to get a feel for everything it includes, then go back and pull out the specific sections you feel would work best to put together into your own weight loss system.

In fact, Thomas actually encourages it. One of the first things she says in the book is that trying to tackle an entire weight-loss regimen at once can be daunting. Instead, she suggests choosing one or two points to start work on immediately, then adding more later when you have those mastered.

It’s the first taste of the inclusive feeling that runs throughout the book. Thomas, who shares her own weight-loss story and self-esteem issue early on, never makes the reader feel like they’re being talked down to by a wise and all-knowing weight loss master. Instead, it’s like a friend with great research skills, sharing everything she’s learned that she thinks might be at all useful to you.

As it turns out, that adds up to an immense amount of information that doesn’t always fit neatly into one of the book’s subcategories. The exercise section, for example, includes a few pages of Chinese dietary tips that could be incorporated by the reader (“Carbohydrates come from rice and noodles,” “Fresh is king in China”). The strategies section includes tips on everything from organizing your fridge to how important it is to choose the right doctor to support you. She’s always honest – one of the first things she says is that there’s no quick solution to losing weight – but she tries to pare down the steps to make them as small and manageable as possible.

Thomas seems to try and answer any question any reader might ever have somewhere in the book, and leaves places for the reader to write just in case she missed something (there are also recipes in the back, a nod to the cookbooks that made Thomas famous). Taken all together it can be a little overwhelming, but skimmed through and sorted out the book’s suggestions add up to the least intimidating weight loss regimen I’ve ever heard of.

Thomas really seems to want to help the reader find something that works. All they have to do is start looking.